Biden Says Gender Is Part of Gun Background Check; Newtown Shooter Refused to Disclose His

(CNSNews.com) – Vice President Joe Biden Tuesday highlighted gender among other characteristics a gun purchaser must fill out on a background check form after reports that the Newtown, Conn. school shooter refused to identify his gender on a college form.

“You walk into Dick’s Sporting Goods or any other place, and they hand you a form,” Biden said Tuesday at a White House event with law enforcement officials from around the country endorsing the Obama administration’s gun control measures. “They say you’ve got to fill this in: It’s your name, where you live, where you were born, your gender and your race, and if you want to make it even quicker to get this done, your Social Security number, which you do not have to give.”

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CNS News first reported on April 1 that Adam Lanza, the Newtown gunman that murdered 20 first graders and six adults in December, refused to identify his gender on his college registration form at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Conn.

Biden advocated strongly for the Senate to pass gun control measures being considered this week, specifically universal background checks. Lanza did not buy the gun used in the shooting, but got it from his mother. Thus, closing loopholes on background checks would not have affected whether he obtained a gun.

During his speech Tuesday, Biden said the NRA is engaged in misinformation.

“They say we – the federal government – want to put every private firearms transaction right under the thumb of the federal government and keep all those names in a massive federal registry,” Biden said. “Kind of scary, man. Black helicopter crowd really is upset.”

Biden insisted that universal background checks would not lead to a federal gun registry, and proceeded to explain it would just be an expansion of how the process currently works.

“You walk into Dick’s Sporting Goods or any other place, and they hand you a form,” Biden said. “They say you’ve got to fill this in: It’s your name, where you live, where you were born, your gender and your race, and if you want to make it even quicker to get this done, your Social Security number, which you do not have to give.

“Then the gun dealer either picks up a phone and calls the FBI – there’s a number they have there – or he gets on his computer and puts this information in and it goes directly to the system,” he added.

Biden said that 92 percent of the time the background check is finished in three minutes.

“It doesn’t say deny because the guy’s a wife beater. It doesn’t say deny because they’ve been adjudicated mentally incompetent,” Biden said. “It doesn’t say deny because they want to buy a certain weapon. It doesn’t say deny because they’re a felon. It just says deny.

“And when the gun dealer calls the FBI or goes online, he doesn’t even say what kind of gun the perspective purchaser wants to buy. There is no record, and within 24 hours of being told that you can sell that gun, the FBI must destroy the information. What’s the information? The name, the address, country of birth, etcetera. It must be destroyed. There is no record kept in some big database, no information about the perspective gun buyer,” he said.